


Hands Around Your Throat, Arms Around Your Chest

by HitanTenshi



Category: Naruto
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Strangulation, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-29 16:22:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15077057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HitanTenshi/pseuds/HitanTenshi
Summary: Mizuki haunts Iruka, asleep or awake.





	Hands Around Your Throat, Arms Around Your Chest

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little scene / scenario I wanted to write. Unbeta'd. The suicide attempt tag is for caution, as said attempt is only briefly mentioned in a couple of sentences.

He’d been drifting off when he’d sensed another’s presence in his apartment: someone familiar, at that. Iruka has trouble gathering the willpower to leave his warm bed to look, but, if it’s someone who has permission to enter his home, like Naruto, then all’s well and good. Probably. Except… shouldn’t he be able to recognize the aura?

Before he can decide, a weight settles over him in bed and cool lips brush his ear. The breath on his skin makes him shiver even before the familiar voice sparks recognition.

“Long time, Ru.”

Iruka’s reaction comes too late. The moment his hands leave the safety of the covers to search for his emergency kunai, the intruder’s hands close around his wrists and pin them to the pillow under Iruka’s head. But by then, at least, Iruka has opened his eyes.

Nothing’s changed about Mizuki. Iruka wouldn’t have expected anything else — he’d learned the hard way that waiting, _hoping_ for change does little when the person has no intention of reform.

“What… How…”

“How I got here isn’t important,” says Mizuki, leaning more of his weight upon Iruka. “But as for what I’m doing here… take a guess.”

Iruka can barely put two words together, Mizuki’s oppressive presence scrambling his best efforts. After watching him struggle, Mizuki snorts, amused.

“I thought it would be obvious.”

Mizuki had always been stronger than him, physically. Iruka can only tug in vain as Mizuki forces his arms back under the covers to join the rest of his body trapped between Mizuki’s knees.

“L… Let me go…” Iruka commands, but his voice comes out small and weak.

Mizuki just leers at him. His hands, no longer occupied with Iruka’s, settle themselves around Iruka’s neck.

“I’m going to kill you now, Ru. I’m going to crush the life out of you and no one will know. No one will care.”

Iruka makes to protest, but Mizuki’s hands already begin to constrict his airflow. Instead of speaking, then, he looks to his right. Mizuki follows his line of sight and clicks his tongue in disdain.

“I guess you have a type for silver hair, huh. Did you think it was an upgrade to lure Sharingan Kakashi into your bed to replace me? That’s foolish, Ru.” The condescension in his eyes coalesces into hatred. “More than foolish: it’s selfish. Did you really think you’d be free of me that easily? Did you really think people would stop seeing you as my leftovers if you put yourself on the arm of Hatake Kakashi? Did you really think you could be _worth_ anything if _he_ told you so!?”

Iruka looks back to Kakashi, only to Kakashi. And something doesn’t make sense. Kakashi should have been awake long before Iruka had been, alerted to any possible disturbance. Why hasn’t he woken up? Why hasn’t he come to Iruka’s rescue?

“See? Even now, you’re depending on him to help you,” Mizuki jeers, fingers tightening around Iruka’s throat. “What a burden you must be. He probably won’t take long at all to get over you. I bet he only keeps you around because of how fuckable your ass is.”

Pushing past the growing buzz in his brain, Iruka summons his remaining strength and tries to throw Mizuki off of him. All Mizuki gives him for his trouble is a painful wrench of the neck. Iruka feels something important strain, and sparks of pain fire down his spine.

“Now be a good boy and let me finish strangling you properly.”

Mizuki’s grip is now too tight for Iruka to turn his head anymore. Colored spots rim Iruka’s vision as he looks up into Mizuki’s malevolent face. He tries to mouth a plea for mercy.

“Mercy? Where was _your_ mercy,” Mizuki hisses, bringing his face close to Iruka’s now, “when you stopped visiting me in prison? You abandoned me, Ru. You tried to run away from me when you know you belong to me. You would have been dead ages ago without me. Remember? I saved your life! You would never have bonded with the demon fox, never would have met Hatake Kakashi, if I had just let you die back then. And you think you can just forget about me and move on with your life? You selfish little slut. You won’t ever be free of me. Even after I kill you, I’ll make sure to curse your soul so you can never find peace. _That_ is what an ungrateful little viper like you deserves.”

And the last thing Iruka hears is Mizuki’s cruel laughter over the sound of his own snapping windpipe.

+.+.+.+.+

Even when he jolts upright in bed, no Mizuki to be found in the waking world, Iruka can’t get a full breath. For what feels like an age, he battles his own frantic chest, tries to force the shallow gasps into submission so that he won’t pass out.

But Kakashi’s companionship, at least, hadn’t been limited to the world of dreams, and he is every bit as responsive to nighttime noise as Iruka had believed he must be. Almost instantaneously, Kakashi’s closer hand supports the curve of Iruka’s back as the other slips between Iruka’s arms to brace his diaphragm.

“Breathe,” he instructs, his voice tender in spite of being rough with sleep.

At least they have a system. This isn’t the first time one of them has woken in a panic — Iruka knows from experience that Kakashi has his own share of nightmares.

With Kakashi’s touch and Kakashi’s voice guiding him, Iruka eventually walks his breathing back down to an acceptable rate. Then, feeling like he’s just sprinted through one of Gai’s challenges, Iruka sags against Kakashi’s shoulder.

“Are you okay now?” Kakashi parts his loose hair with deft fingers so as to see his face.

“Mm… Will be.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Because sometimes they don’t, and they share respect for that privacy.

Iruka stews over the dream. If Kakashi weren’t holding him, one arm looped around his shoulders, Iruka wouldn’t have the strength even to consider talking about it. He’s had bad dreams about Mizuki coming after him before, but this one…

“Kakashi… am I… selfish?”

He can practically _hear_ Kakashi blink, surprised. “What makes you ask that?” But Kakashi is, after all, a genius. “…Does this have to do with… that person?”

Iruka nods.

Kakashi pulls him into a hug outright. Though startled by the shift, Iruka finds Kakashi’s arms around him a comfort, grounding him to this reality. In this world, Mizuki can’t just slip into Iruka’s apartment and strangle him without bringing Kakashi to his defense.

“He said something,” Kakashi assumes rightly. “Called you selfish for moving on with your life, and a number of other unflattering things?”

Iruka nods into Kakashi’s shoulder.

With a sigh, Kakashi presses soft kisses to Iruka’s cheek. “Anything he says about you, even in a dream, is invalidated by what kind of person he is.”

“Even if it were the truth?”

“From my experience, observing some of your interactions with him, that person is only capable of telling half-truths, at best.” A pause, then, “What did he say that you feel like is the truth? I’ll refute it for you.”

In spite of himself, Iruka laughs. “A generous offer.” But one that, in all seriousness, may indeed help him clear his mind. He sinks deeper into Kakashi’s embrace, delaying explanation by contemplating how it might be nice never to leave these arms again. But, eventually, he gathers the will to speak:

“When I was eleven, my sensei put us into the chuunin exams, even though we were fresh out of the Academy. My teammates died in the second round, right in front of me, and I was disqualified for being unable to complete the round’s goal on my own. I was in shock, but my sensei could only talk about how disappointed in me he was. He said things that… pushed me…” Iruka knows this is a delicate subject to broach around Kakashi, but the context is necessary to explain the hold Mizuki has over him.

With a loose grip, Iruka guides Kakashi’s fingers to an old scar just below his ribs on the left side.

“The loneliness through the previous year had already put me in a bad place. I had tried to make friends and study hard and uphold the will of fire, and for what? I felt so worthless. I thought… I thought no one would miss me.”

He feels Kakashi’s hand tremble against his skin, but he pushes through. “I was about to jab a kunai into my stomach when Mizuki wrenched my hand away.”

“Iruka—”

“Please let me finish.” He takes a fresh breath to restore some calm to his voice. “Mizuki always held it over my head afterward: that he had saved my life. That I… owed him. Being young and foolish, I saw it as a sort of protectiveness. I remember being so happy that he even cared whether I lived or died. I gave him everything.”

Kakashi’s other arm tightens around Iruka’s chest, like it can guard him from the painful memories. “He brings it up a lot in my dreams. Says I… Says all the happiness I have is thanks to him. Says I’m not allowed to have happiness outside of him. I know I should just cover my ears and ignore him because he’s unhinged, but when I think about that night, about how he patched me up and held me like he really actually cared, I can’t…” His face is damp, but he doesn’t remember shedding tears. “I can’t help but feel _guilty_ at the thought of cutting contact with him.”

Warm lips press to his temple, then work their way down his cheek to his jaw.

“If he hated me so much,” Iruka continues, “why did he save me then? Did he… Did he want to kill me himself? Had I not suffered enough yet? I don’t understand, and turning it over and over in my head just makes me hate myself.”

“Then stop,” says Kakashi, soft but straightforward. “You don’t have to devote one more second of thought to him. Just because he saved you then — and I will begrudge gratitude to him for that one act because I’m so very glad you are alive — that doesn’t mean you _belong_ to him from that point forward. You have a life of your own, Iruka, and you’re allowed to live it, separate from what that person wants.”

“…Why is it so hard to make myself believe that…” Iruka mumbles, more rhetorically than not but Kakashi answers him anyway.

“Because you were emotionally abused by that person for twelve years. It takes time to heal from that kind of treatment.”

“I feel so weak.”

“It’s not nearly as weak to be human as the rulebooks say it is.” Kakashi tilts his head back for a proper kiss then, so slow and sweet that it drugs Iruka toward tranquility.

“I didn’t let myself feel anything for a long time,” says Kakashi when he finally breaks the kiss. “It’s thanks to you that I’ve remembered how. So please, believe that I’m not patronizing you when I say you are not weak, especially not for letting yourself feel… and hurt.”

Honored, but a little numb from the potency of Kakashi’s honesty, Iruka nods. Kakashi kisses him again, and again, until the nightmare begins to feel like some distant thing.

“I love you,” Kakashi whispers into his skin.

Iruka shivers and wraps his arms around Kakashi’s neck. “I love you, too. So much. I wish this didn’t keep getting in the way of that. You… You deserve better than having to compete with that person for space in my head.”

With a shushing sound, Kakashi cards through Iruka’s hair. Slowly, he eases them back down to the pillows. “It’s all right. Whenever you get lost thinking about that person, I’ll remind you that it’s okay for you to forget about him. It’s okay for you have this with me. I’ll remind you as many times as it takes for you to believe me, and then some.”

“Kakashi… you’re too kind to me.”

“There’s no such thing as too kind when it comes to how much I cherish you, how much I want you to be happy.”

Hands shaking, Iruka cups Kakashi’s earnest face. “I want you to be happy, too. Is looking out for me like this… Does it really—”

“It does.”

Iruka blinks, surprised by the swift reply.

“It makes me very happy to look out for you. There are… many I haven’t been able to protect… But it drives me to try even harder. I refuse to back down. Knowing that you once tried to… that I could never have gotten to know you… It just makes me want to protect you even more.”

Iruka feels his face flush. “Y… You’re pretty impassioned about this.”

Smiling fondly, Kakashi rests his forehead against Iruka’s. “Just rely on me. I’m not an elite for nothing.”

“I thought you said, when we first started dating, that, when it comes to matters of the heart, your skills are genin-level, at best.”

Kakashi flusters for a moment, but quickly regains his calm. “That was then. I’ve learned a lot since. It’s all thanks to you, sensei.”

Chuckling in spite of himself, Iruka points out, “You can leave the _sensei_ part out of the bedroom, thanks. I don’t need your sultry voice following me into the classroom.”

“Ho, so you think about me during class?” Kakashi snickers and skitters his fingers up Iruka’s sides. Iruka squeaks and tries to escape, with little luck.

But they’re both tired, and the adrenaline from Iruka’s sudden waking has drained. The tickling only really lasts long enough for Iruka and Kakashi to tangle up in each other’s limbs.

“No more nightmares tonight,” says Kakashi, eyes already shut as he nuzzles into Iruka’s hair.

“I’ll do my best,” says Iruka.

Kakashi’s arms are around his chest again. Protected by their warmth and strength, Iruka sinks back into sleep, and Mizuki does not re-enter his thoughts.


End file.
